Automatix Alert! [was: Re: Security]

[Mario Vukelic]

On Fri, 2008-12-05 at 16:02 -0500, Praising Jesus wrote:
> decided to load Ubuntu on that drive. I downloaded the Ultimate
> Edition 2.0

I have never heard of "Ubuntu Ultimate Edition". Be advised, however
that it is not the official Ubuntu but modified in different ways. The
official Ubuntu is here [1]. Some of these modifications might make it
easer to use for beginners (like preinstalled proprietary multmedia
codes), but some seem to make it worse [2]. It probably makes its
distribution also illegal in some jurisdictions (there is a reason for
why Ubuntu cannot distribute all this proprietary software).

Any problems you might have with this distribution cannot be pinned to
Ubuntu. In fact, if old-style netiquette was still in effect, you should
not even post here, but ask in the support community of UUE [3].

To be honest, the whole thing sounds a little fishy to me. I consider
myself quite up-to-date with important linux distribution developments,
and I find it a bit weird that I never heard of it. Googling for "Ubuntu
Ultimate Edition" seems not to bring up the highest-quality links,
either.

And what's worst is that they are definitely bordering on violating the
Ubuntu trademark policy [4], see "Derived Works". 

Oh gosh, while writing this post I poked around a bit on their website
[5] and found this gem:
"Is Automatix Dead?
October 14th, 2008 
Is Automatix dead?  Yes and no, Automatix is dead no support for hardy
based O/S’s, but it has been reborn as Ultamatix. [6]". 

They list the same link under their "Other services" box on the website,
so I figure that these are the same people.
I hereby announce publicly that I will not support any of your problems
as long as you run this operating system. I have seen enough systems on
this mailing list that were broken by Automatix.

Automatix was insanely badly programmed add-on software for early
versions of Ubuntu. For the longest time its developers played deaf when
Ubuntu developers called them on their errors, and later they tried to
fix them, but did not really understand the underlying problems and
therefore had little success.

Please see this analysis of Automatix by an actual Ubuntu developer [7]:
[8] ("in its current form Automatix is actively dangerous to systems"),
and this analysis of Ultamatix [9], ("I wrote about Automatix some time
ago. It died and the world became a better place. More recently it's
been resurrected as something called Ultamatix. In summary, don't
bother. It's crap. And dangerous. But mostly crap.").

Trust me, you do not want to run software that was created by these
people. My advice would be to go to [10] and download Ubuntu proper.


[1] http://www.ubuntu.com/
[2] http://www.linux.com/feature/137106
[3] http://forumubuntusoftware.info/
[4] http://www.ubuntu.com/aboutus/trademarkpolicy
[5] http://ultimateedition.info/
[6] http://ultamatix.com/
[7] https://launchpad.net/~mjg59
[8] http://mjg59.livejournal.com/77440.html
[9] http://mjg59.livejournal.com/99905.html
[10] http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download